Changing the world of funeral flowers from my shed
I’ve long been a vocal advocate for change in funeral flowers so when a few weeks ago, Gill Hodgson of Fieldhouse Flowers, the same woman who started Flowers from the Farm, asked me if I’d join her in a project to make more natural, plastic-free funeral flowers more widely available to people across the UK, it seemed only right to say ‘yes’.
As florists who’ve been working with funeral flowers for years, Gill and I are both painfully aware of the huge problem of plastic waste in this sector of the floristry industry – on a personal level I’ve been aghast when attending funerals to see the oceans of plastic based floral foam tributes filling the viewing areas and displayed on graves. We both think it’s time to try to change ideas about what funeral flowers are, and to encourage more florists to offer compostable arrangements which will disappear back into the earth rather than hanging around as microplastics long after we’ve departed.
There are so many different ways that funeral flowers can be made, and so many different ways that we can think about them – but that’s easy for me to say as someone who makes plastic-free funeral flowers every week. My familiarity with this topic is not the norm! If you’re ordering funeral flowers for the first time and are grieving a loss, the last thing you’re going to feel like is doing extensive research to find an alternative to the the styles of arrangement which have become the norm for this final farewell and which are often the only choices put in front of you.
Gill and I want to make it easy for people to find more eco-friendly alternatives, and to bring funeral flowers out of the shadows and raise awareness of what funeral flowers can be. We realise that we’re not going to change public perceptions overnight, but want to show the public what beautifully natural arrangements these flowers can be. In the very long term, we’d love to see compostable funeral flowers become as obvious a choice as the plastic filled letters and shapes which currently dominate the landscape of cemetries and crematoria across the UK.
It started with chat about ideas in January, grew into a website by the end of February, and by last week we’d already found ourselves booked to talk to funeral professionals and to write magazine pieces on the subject so it seems that we’re not the only ones who’d like to see change in this field.
As first step on our journey to change the world of funeral flowers, last Saturday, The Farewell Flowers Directory opened for florist registrations – we want to recruit florists from across the UK who offer compostable, more natural choices to their funeral clients. Florists will need to have a website with infomation about their funeral arrangements because this is key in making it easy for the people who are looking for funeral flowers; they’ll need to offer some compostable styles of arrangements and they’ll need to use some UK grown ingredients in every compostable arrangement.
Now two days since it opened, it’s been heartening to see that florists from all over the UK share our passion for this topic – it’s reassuring that we’re not alone on this mission and that there are florists in all lots of places who can offer alternatives to ‘the catalogue’ for those who are desperately seeking them at a time which can be overwhelming. Every small step helps, and we’re out to change the world of funeral flowers, one arrangement at a time – starting with flowers and ideas from Gill’s Yorkshire farm and from my own small patch and shed in Birmingham.
Find out more
Are you a florist wanting to learn more about foam-free funeral floristry?
See my online course ‘Green Funeral Flowers’
Sign up to The Farewell Flowers Directory